The aim of this study was the assessment of groundwater vulnerability and pollution risk of the Perivleptos karst aquifer in the northwestern part of Greece. Hence, the EPIK method has been applied within the study area. Additionally, a detailed literature overview has been obtained, including the worldwide application of the EPIK method. The hazard map has been developed for the implementation of risk assessment. The resulting vulnerability map was divided into four classes and showed especially high to very high vulnerability. The subsequent hazard assessment has shown mostly low to moderate endangerment for the northern part of the study area, which is mainly covered by forest, while the areas covered by urban and industrial, as well as agricultural land, use primarily show high to very high endangerment. Concluding in the risk map, the study area consists of 13% of very high, 48% of high, 36% of moderate and 4% of low risk of contamination. According to the literature overview, the EPIK method was mostly used in combination with other vulnerability assessment methods, and results have been validated through tracer tests, sensitivity analysis or comparing to other methods. In this study, an additional single parameter sensitivity analysis was obtained for validation of the EPIK parameters.
<p>Climate, climate variability, and climate change could influence groundwater. Shifts in precipitation patterns, recharge, or snowmelt are among the several climate-related variables with important impacts on groundwater. However, the climate-groundwater relationship is not one-way. Groundwater can also impact the climate itself via its influence on different processes and variables such as evaporation, soil moisture, and vegetation. Understanding the interactions and the feedback relationship between groundwater and climate is crucial for sustainable water resource management and resilient adaptation to climate change. Current understanding of how climate influences groundwater and the resulting feedback from groundwater and its impacts on climate is limited. This is of particular importance in the face of projected climatic changes. Here, we aim to develop a simple analytical framework to extend the projection capabilities required to characterize the climate-groundwater interactions depending on the soil characteristics serving as an intermediate domain between the groundwater and climate systems. Our proposed analytical framework can be used to identify potential regions with significant two-way (bidirectional) interactions between climate and groundwater using soil characteristics and soil water retention curves following the theoretical lines discussed in Shokri and Salvucci (2011) and Or and Lehmann (2019). Using this framework, we identify regions of expected hydraulic connections between groundwater and soil surface, depending on the competition between capillary forces and the limiting gravity and viscous forces, and the groundwater depth (GWD) in the city of Hamburg. We argue that in regions with bidirectional interactions, groundwater is potentially more vulnerable to climate change and variability. Moreover, our initial results suggest that regions with finer textured soils are more sensitive to changes in evaporation and air temperature in terms of hydraulic connections between groundwater and the soil surface, which can influence the groundwater-climate interactions. Our analysis provides the basis for further investigation of the feedback impacts of groundwater on several variables, such as soil moisture, ground cooling capacity, and vegetation patterns under different climate change scenarios.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>References</p> <p>Or, D., & Lehmann, P. (2019). Surface evaporative capacitance: How soil typeand rainfall characteristics affect global&#8208;scale surface evaporation. Water Resources Research, 55, 519&#8211;539.https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR024050.</p> <p>Shokri, N., Salvucci, G. (2011). Evaporation from porous media in the presence of a water table. Vadose Zone J., 10, 1309-1318.</p>
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